We found a match
Your institution may have rights to this item. Sign in to continue.
- Title
An Equality Too Far? Historical and Contemporary Perspectives of Gender Inequality in British and International Football.
- Authors
Williams, Jean
- Abstract
The purpose of the article is to examine the significance of female play in Association Football in Britain. The European context indicates shifting social values from the beginnings of the 'women's game' in the 1890s to the present day. The argument begins with the premise that sporting practices are historically produced, socially constructed and culturally defined. Britain pioneered the first phase of football's widespread popularity with women during, and shortly after, the First World War. The English Football Association (FA) found this threat to the male professional game sufficiently serious to 'ban' women's football in 1921. The revival of women's football in the 1960s as primarily a participatory activity (rather than as a spectator-supported sport) is still answering an agenda whereby gender difference is naturalised and fixed. However, there is an independent practice of English women's football which, in its most recent form, has become a centrally regulated, but essentially devolved and voluntaristic sporting activity. Consequently, the question of whether the FA can be seen as the most appropriate patron of the supposed national sport is set against the self-governing tradition of the women's game. Legal and educational narratives of equality compare unfavourably with, for example, Scandinavia and the United States where there is some expectation of equity of result, rather than of opportunity.
- Subjects
UNITED Kingdom; FOOTBALL; GENDER inequality; DISCRIMINATION in sports; WOMEN football players
- Publication
Historical Social Research, 2006, Vol 31, Issue 1, p151
- ISSN
0172-6404
- Publication type
Article